Northside personnel costs to drop $2.7M

By William K. Alcorn

Northside’s work force has been reduced from 1,390 to 1,250 since the start of 2009.

YOUNGSTOWN — Forum Health will reduce annual personnel costs at Northside Medical Center by an estimated $2,775,000 when it closes the hospital’s adult-behavioral health unit and lays off the full-time equivalent of 50 employees within the next 30 days.

The behavioral unit will be moved to Forum’s Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren, where a geriatric psych unit is located, said Michael Seelman, Northside’s chief operating officer. However, Northside employees will not move with the unit, he said.

Seelman announced the layoffs Tuesday.

“As we continue to reorganize to make Northside financially self-sufficient, tough choices must be made if we are going to successfully emerge from bankruptcy,” he said in a prepared statement.

He said the layoffs affect 27 nurses in the behavioral unit and 23 nonbedside employees from various other hospital departments.

He said the move is part of an ongoing effort to reduce costs at Northside and make the hospital financially viable. It gets Forum closer to where it needs to be financially for its reorganization plan, due to be filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court by Sept. 15.

Seelman said that with the behavioral-health layoffs, which represent 4 percent of the Northside work force, the hospital will have reduced its work force from 1,390 to about 1,250 since the beginning of 2009.

He said the Northside behavioral unit averaged 12 patients a day. He said he has talked with officials at St. Elizabeth Health Center and Turning Point Counseling Services, a Mahoning County Mental Health Board agency, and believes those organizations will be able to handle the community’s behavioral-health needs.

Seelman, who described Tuesday’s layoffs as “very difficult,” said Forum is looking within the hospital and elsewhere for jobs for the displaced workers.

The announced closing of the psychiatric unit has the Mahoning County Mental Health Board and probate court scrambling to find alternatives for those who need to be hospitalized.

Ron Marian, mental-health board executive director, said he will explore the use of the Sharon Regional Health System or St. Thomas Hospital in Akron.

“Trumbull’s full all the time,” he said of Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital’s 16-bed psychiatric facility.

Marian and Judge Mark Belinky of Mahoning County Probate Court said they’d like to talk with St. Elizabeth Health Center officials about expanding the capacity of that hospital’s psychiatric unit.

The use of out-of-town hospitals presents transportation and discharge planning problems, Marian said.

Judge Belinky said he wants to keep patients in Mahoning County, if possible, for their convenience and that of their families. “I’d hate to send people out of county and even out of state,” he said.

“We’re very concerned,” the judge added.

The probate court commits patients to mental hospitals and orders guardianships for mentally-ill people. The mental-health board coordinates publicly funded community mental-health programs.

SEE ALSO: Judge OKs more time for Forum.